A/N: Sorry about the late update, been having problems with my internet! This isn't beta'd so any problems are my own. Thanks for the great reviews so far, guys! Plenty more angst to come!

xxx

It took her a moment to compose herself, having to try and swallow the bile that was threatening to make an appearance.

"My... My family? She had only ever told one person everything about her family, and although he had stayed whilst she cried, holding her hand, he didn't stay around for long after that.

"Yeah, it seems like a logical place to start." She said softly, trying to ease her into the subject.

Sara took a deep breath. It never usually bothered her this much, but she supposed that after such a stressful week, she was a bit more sensitive and vulnerable to these things. "I uh... I don't know where to start." It was true. There was so much about her family, she could write volumes on it, she didn't know where to pick her starting point.

"Well, were you an only child?"

"No, I have an older brother, David." Sara answered easily. She hadn't thought about him in a long time. She hadn't seen him in an even longer period of time.

"Why don't you tell me about him? What was your relationship like?"

Sara looked up to her, figuring she was sussing an easy starting point. If only she knew what she was going to hear.

"It was okay... I guess. We had a pretty good relationship. He used to read me stories beofre I went to bed when I was younger. It sort of changed when he went to highschool. He was six years older than me. I guess, for a teenager, hanging around with his geeky little sister wasn't at the top of his list." She said with a small forced smile.

"A typical older brother." Samantha said gently, speaking from experience, being the youngest of three, with two older brothers.

"Yeah, exactly. When I got a little older again, he used to take me out with him, but that didn't last long either. He used to bring me home books, so I could read them while he was out." He had always been good to her. Most of the time.

"Did you ever fight with him?"

Sara laughed softly. "Of course, we were brother and sister. I had a tendency to get him in trouble. With the best intentions. Playing hide and seek one day, I decided to hide under his bed. I found a bag of what I thought was dirt, under his bed. I dragged it out with me, going to put it in the bin, but my mother intercepted on the way. Turned out it was his bag of weed. He said he was keeping it for a friend. But that didn't wash. He was grounded for a year."

She couldn't help but laugh slightly as she thought back on the memory. In all her innocence she had managed to get her brother grounded for a year, and she had ended up in hospital with a broken arm that same night. Her dad had said something about being a tell tale.

"Why don't you tell me about your parents now?"

She tried not to look too hesitant at the thought of having to talk about them. "We lived in San Francisco while I was young. They used to run a B&B, but it was a hard business to break into. Mom ended up going back to being a cleaner, and Dad tried his best to hold down a job for longer than a week." The resentment was hard to ignore in her voice, but Samantha didn't press her on that for the moment.

"How did you and your Mom get on?"

Sara gave a small shrug of her shoulders, thankful for the leading questions, or she would have had no idea where to either begin. "Yeah, I suppose it was okay. For a while. I didn't really see her a lot... I didn't see either of my parents a lot."

"They worked a lot, and even if Dad wasn't working, he never spent much time at home during the day. I tended to stay after school sometimes, at the library, or with a teacher, when I could."

"You didn't go to friends houses after school, or them to yours?"

"I wasn't really the social type." That was an understatment. "I found it hard to make friends. It was easier to not focus on people, and read my books, do my school work. I guess I preferred a fantasy world to my reality."

"You used what you could to escape from your life. It's a coping method, in some. It's quite common." Samantha said softly, as she lifted a bottle of water to her lips, sipping slowly.

"I used it a lot." Sara admitted, her gaze dropping to her hand folded in her lap, suddenly very interested in the scratches that covered her pale skin.

"Why did you need to?" Her voice was level, inviting. She half expected Sara to call it quits right now. To finish the day. She wouldn't have minded, she didn't want to push her too hard on her first session. It surprised her when Sara nodded, ready to tell her this.

"When my Dad lost his job, he would go and drink. A lot. He would spend days drunk, which would lead to him losing any job he had. He could sober up for a few days, to get a job, and then to celebrate his first paycheck, he would start drinking again, which would lead to him losing his job. it was a vicious cycle." Sara informed her, keeping her eyes locked on her hand, flexing her fingers.

"When he got really drunk. He got abusive. First, it started off with him hitting Mom. I used to lie awake at night listening to her screaming, begging him to stop. That was when David would come in and read to me. I think it helped him too. I can remember that as far back as when I was four, but I'm sure it happened before that too. Before I turned five, mom got a job working nights. She was never there when Dad was angry. So he turned his attention on David and I."

"David took the brunt of it for a while, protecting me. But he never gave Dad much satisfaction. Looking back on it, he didn't scream like Mom did, or beg him to stop like I did. He was silent."

She took a break for a moment, leaning her head back against the cushion of the couch behind her. She took a few deep breaths trying to slow down her pounding heart. She greatfully accepted the fresh cold bottle of water that Samantha pressed in her hands, thanking her as she drank a few sips, trying not to over do it.

"You're doing great, Sara. Honestly, whenever you're ready."

Sara took a few more moments to herself before she opened her eyes again, straightening her posture.

"I was five, when I took my first trip to the hospital. I've had more fractures and broken bones than I can count. My mom was very convincing, and I followed her example. Told doctors I fell off my bike, or out of a tree. I played on the school football team, or I just tripped down the stairs. They seemed to believe it. If they started to ask questions, we changed hospitals. After a while, they stopped taking me. Only if it was serious. I got pretty good at tying my own slings." She was surprised at how easy it was for her to tell Samantha all of this. She had only told Grissom the ending.

"I was never allowed wear t-shirts, or shorts. Even when it was really warm, I had to wear long sleeves and trousers, all year round. Even though he was drunk, he knew most of the time to avoid hitting my face. But not always. A few teachers questioned it, and I was soon moved schools."

"Sometimes, Dad used to try and get David to hit me or Mom. Said it was the way men were supposed to treat women. When David would refuse... The beatings were... Incredibly harsh. I remember loosing a tooth one of those nights. In the end, David used to hit us, just so Dad wouldn't. That never lasted long either though, Dad would then beat us all afterwards. David used to never stay at home then. He was about fourteen or fifteen. He would stay in his friends house, or sleep it rough, rather than come home to Dad."

"On those nights, especially when Mum was working and it was just me and him, I would go straight to my room and spend my evening doing homework. I'd crawl into bed, going without dinner so I didn't have to see him. When it got dark, I'd take out my flashlight and read under my covers. Dad would come bursting into my room, I'd pretend to be asleep, but he'd drag me from the bed, usually by my hair. He used to get angry when he'd see my book. He tore each and every one of them in half one night. I think I cried more than I ever had that night."

She was telling the truth there. She tried not to cry or beg when he would hit her. She seen how it worked for David if he was quiet, but obviously her Dad favored her. Her books had been her escapism, the world she could lose herself in and forget about her own troubles for a while. With them taken away, she was lost. That was when David started bringing books home to her. He had no money, she had no idea where he got them from, but she did't question it.

"We can give it a rest for today if you want, Sara." Samantha offered softly, knowing how taxing this was. Heck, it was hard for her to listen to some of these stories, she could only imagine how it felt to actually have been a part of it.

"No... No, if I stop now, I'll never finish this story." She said, taking another moment to compose herself.

"There was one night, again I was on my own. I was nine. I tried standing up to him. I hit him back. He didn't like that." She absent mindly rubbed her right hand up her left arm, wincing slightly at the memories. She thought she had buried everything, but with the ease it all tumbled out, she figured that maybe she should have told someone about this a long time ago.

"He threw me down the stairs that night. And he had gotten new boots, too. Steel-toe cap ones. It was that night everything changed. I had been uh... Knocked unconscious. I remember my Mom coming in, stepping over me. Then everything went black again. When I came round... The air smelt weird and the house was quiet. My house was never quiet. There was always yelling, fighting. I managed to pull myself up, and drag myself to the my parents bedroom, they had a room on the ground floor."

"The door was open, and when I looked inside, Mom was sitting on the bed, and Dad was lying next to her. I thought for a moment he was sleeping. That's when I saw the blood. It was everywhere. On the floor, the walls, the ceiling. Mom was rocking on the bed, repeatedly saying how sorry she was. She wasn't apologising to him though. She was apologising to me. Then I saw the knife in her hands. Covered in blood. I should have felt bad. The only thing I felt was relief. I could finally close my eyes, and not be afriad he was going to come into my room again."

She shuddered slightly, stealing a glance at Samantha whose gaze was fixed steadily on her, a look of understanding on her face. She was the first person who didn't look at her with pity, and Sara appreciated that more than she could say.

"I blacked out again, and when I came around, there were flashing lights, cops everywhere, two paramedics in the room, one with Dad, the other with me. I had cracked two ribs, dislocated my shoulder and broke two fingers. And then we had the cuts and bruises. This young cop took one look at the blood in the room, and then me, and he emptied everything in his stomach there and then."

"I was led out of the room, and even I was covered in blood. I couldn't see my Mom... David still hadn't come home. A CSI, I now know, took pictures of me, I had to give them my clothes. They gave me new ones as the paramedics looked after me again, cleaning my cuts, wiping away the blood once the CSI got a sample. I heard one of them saying it was hard to tell if it was mine, or my Dads. Then a woman came to take me into foster care. I couldn't let go of her hand once she gave it to me. But I can't remember her name... Or what she looked like. Just the lights, the blood."

"After another while there, they took me to the hospital. I spent the night there, got some x-rays, bandages, a few stitches. Next day they sent me into foster care. I never seen David again. I only seen Mom twice after that... And I don't even know where Dad is buried. I didn't want to know."

To think that a child had gone through so much. She knew Sara was strong, but Samantha found a new admiration for the woman before her. She had seen some patients with similar backgrounds, but she had a feeling that this was only the beginning of the Sara Sidle story, and that there were many more chapters to come.

"How do you feel about what your Mom did?"

"For a long time, I felt angry, and confused. I was only nine. It took me a while to grasp it all. I know she did what she did to protect me. But part of me resented it. It was too late. I had been his victim for years, and she had never tried to protect me before. I had also gotten good at hiding what had happened, making it seem like I had a normal life. Well, as normal as anyone could have. After that night, everyone knew, and I could no longer pretend my life was normal. I could see it in everyones eyes."

"And for a very long time, I had assumed that my house, was a normal house. I had grown up with it. I thought it was how every family was. That night in the hospital, I soon realised that everything I had known in my life to be normal, wasn't. She had taken that away from me. As I got older, I started to understand more. My mother was a schizophrenic. I started to understand that she was as much a victim as I was. It got to a point where she could no longer take it, and she snapped."

"Do you forgive her, for what happened? For allowing it to go on so long, for not stopping it sooner, for making you lie about what happened, and eventually, for killing your father?" Samantha pressed softly.

"I've tried to... On more than one occasion. But it's hard. I blamed her for a lot of what happened to me. It's hard to forget everything."

"You don't have to forget it, to forgive her, Sara."

"It seems like the only way. Every time I think of what happened, I get angry all over again. So, I don't let myself think about it."

"I know it may sound condasending of me, Sara, but to move on from what happened in your childhood, to ensure that it won't affect your life now, or in the future, you will have to think about it, you'll have to forgive, but the demons to rest, so that you can move on with yout life. You have never really allowed yourself to heal from what happened, so you could never move on." Samantha leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

"I guess, I felt that the bones healed, so everything else would in time." Sara mumbled, looking back down to her hands. "Are we finished?" She asked, her voice dry, shaky.

"Yeah, we can wrap up for now, Sara. You did fantastically today. But I need you to listen to what I've said. You need to work through your emotions, figure out why exactly you are still angry with your Mother, in order to be able to bury that anger, and not allow it to take over you." She paused for a moment as she stood and made her way to her desk, picking up her phone. "I'll call someone to take you back to your room - no objections - and I will see you same time tomorrow."

Sara took in what she said, nodding slowly. She guessed she wouldn't be sleeping tonight. Even if she tried, after everything that she just relived, she would be awake with nightmares all night.

A soft knock on the door signalled the arrival of the porter with the wheelchair to bring her back to her room. "Thank you, Samantha, for listening to me."

"You don't have to thank me, Sara. It's what I'm here for. I'll see you tomorrow." She said with a soft smile as Sara disappeared from the room, paler and shakier than when she entered.

Samantha shuddered as she sank down into her seat behind her desk. What an experience for a little girl to go through. She rubbed her head, and knew herself, those images that Sara had painted would keep her awake all night.

She was starting to understand more and more Sara's mindframe the day of the accident. And her actions that ensued.

Sara Sidle was not likely to be a patient she would forget anytime soon.

xxx

A/N: I know that was a long chapter, they get longer, and heavier, but it will be worth it in the end, promise! Give me a review, I give you an update, easy process ;)